For the sake of all mankind
Amid the arrogant absence of the American president, leaders from more than 100 nations are gathering in Johannesburg, the South African capital, to give substance to the implementation of what their leaders promised 10 years ago in the Rio Earth Summit declaration. Judging from past experience, however, this coming World Summit on Sustainable Development could end up with more empty promises rather than action.
The Rio Summit 1992 concluded that economic, social and environmental concerns are inescapably interlinked to world development. Thus, sustainable development, integrating economic, social and environmental interests, should be established as the central organizing principles for societies around the world. The ensuing declaration therefore contained pledges to eradicate environmental problems, reduce poverty and foster sustainable development.
Obviously, however, formulating global policies based on the principle of sustainable development as envisioned by the Rio Summit would not only be difficult to achieve, but would be even more allusive in implementation. One obvious example is the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climatic change. Even though more and more scientific findings have proven that human-induced climatic change is accelerating, the international community cannot bring the Kyoto Protocol into force because the United States, the largest contributor of human-induced climatic change, arrogantly withdrew from the consensus and refused to endorse it.
Thus the United Nations endorsed four preparatory committee meetings of senior officials, ministers, non-governmental organizations and the international business community, to try to iron out differences between the parties involved. The last one was held in Bali three months ago, with the good intention of producing a 10-year action plan that was supposed to contain definite targets, measured by time and actions. The expected Bali Commitment did not materialize. Instead their unfinished business was pushed over to this week's meetings in Johannesburg, with the diminishing hope that an action plan will be endorsed by heads of state in their summit next week.
Meanwhile, the last decade has witnessed exactly what the global community 10 years ago pledged to avoid. Emissions of carbon dioxide, which have been blamed for climatic change and global warming, have increased by 10 percent worldwide, with the United States being the forerunner with an increase of 18 percent. The rate is substantially higher than the previous decade.
Rich countries at Rio promised to devote more resources to help poorer nations, with a commitment to give 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product in overseas aid. Only the Nordic countries and the Netherlands met the target. Development aid from the rich countries as a whole has actually declined as a share of their total output, from 0.35 percent of national income in the early 1990s to 0.22 percent in 2000. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that the rich countries' economies grew by a total of more that US$10 trillion during the 1990s, while about 1.2 billion people elsewhere have had to live on less than one dollar a day.
The rich countries grudgingly disbursed around $50 billion in annual development assistance for developing countries with a myriad of strings attached. On the other hand, they have no sense of shame in extending subsidies to their agricultural sector to the tune of $350 billion annually, even though the policy practically denies the poor countries access to the rich countries' markets.
In fact global conditions have actually worsened in the decade since the Rio Summit. Today no less than 80 countries have lower per capita incomes than they did 10 years ago. The Rio convention to protect biodiversity does not stop the degradation of sources of natural diversity. Instead two richest sources, coral reefs and tropical forests, have become seriously degraded. The area of tropical forests that disappears annually exceeds the size of Java island. More than 20 percent of the world's fish stocks are overexploited or depleted. The amount of fresh water available to each person decreased from 17,000 cubic meters in 1950 to 7,000 cubic meters in 1995; the amount has been decreasing so rapidly lately that up to five billion people will experience "high water stress" by 2020. The list of worsening conditions due mainly to human greed is virtually endless. There is an estimate that the world will require the resources of four planets the size of the Earth if the going rate of consumption of energy and resources of the richest one-fifth of mankind was to be applied to the rest of the world's population. The Johannesburg Summit, the largest meeting ever held by the United Nations, should face the challenges, for the sake of all mankind.